DHS Arrests, Seeks to Deport Pro-Palestinian Georgetown University Student

An Indian national whose father-in-law is with Hamas has been taken into custody.

The campus of Georgetown University in Washington on May 7, 2020. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has arrested and is seeking to deport an Indian national studying at Georgetown University, the latest in a series of arrests following through on President Donald Trump’s promise to find and deport “terrorist sympathizers.”

Badar Khan Suri, a foreign exchange student at the school, was arrested because he has been “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, said on social media platform X.

The Immigration and Nationality Act says that immigrants can be deported if the U.S. secretary of state determines that their presence or activities “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

According to the Hindustan Times, the father of Suri’s wife is a former Hamas deputy foreign minister. Maphaz Ahmad Yousef, Suri’s wife, told the outlet that “Hamas is a political party fighting for the cause of Palestine, not a terrorist organization.”

A profile of Yousef on the Georgetown University website says she has worked with the foreign ministry in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas.

Suri’s close connections to a senior adviser of Hamas prompted Secretary of State Marco Rubio on March 15 to deem him deportable under the law, according to McLaughlin.

Suri’s social media posts include writing in 2023 after the Hamas incursion into Israel that by focusing on the incursion and not paying attention to events that have unfolded over the previous decades, “you accept occupation [of Gaza] and take away right to resist by all means.” He also brought up Bhagat Singh, an Indian who killed a British police officer and set off bombs in Delhi.

Other posts that have since been deleted included writing that Israel was lying about babies being beheaded by Hamas and about rapes or mass killings allegedly carried out at a carnival by Hamas, Middle East Forum research associate Anna Stanley said.

“The Trump administration took decisive action in preventing the United States from becoming a haven for extremists hiding behind academic credentials,” Stanley said in a statement after Suri’s arrest. “The American people deserve universities free from terrorist sympathizers, and this deportation sends a strong message: those who support terror will find no sanctuary in our institutions.”

Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, which is part of the university’s School of Foreign Service. His arrest was first reported by Politico.

Suri was detained on March 17 by DHS agents outside his home in Rosslyn, Virginia. He has been in the United States on a student visa. His wife is an American citizen, according to his lawyer.

“If an accomplished scholar who focuses on conflict resolution is whom the government decides is bad for foreign policy, then perhaps the problem is with the government, not the scholar,” Suri’s lawyer said in an email.

Suri’s arrest has been challenged in federal court in Virginia. A copy of his petition has not been posted to the court docket.

A Georgetown University spokesperson said that the university had not received a reason for Suri’s detention and that it was not aware that Suri had engaged in any illegal activity.

The arrest follows the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who led pro-Palestinian protests at the school after the Hamas incursion, and Leqaa Kordia, who also took part in the protests. Khalil has been fighting his deportation and remains in the United States.

Trump vowed earlier in March that Khalil’s arrest was the “first arrest of many to come.”

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote in a social media post. “Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country—never to return again,” he said.

Reuters contributed to this report.